S5E63: How to see your own problems
Full transcript:
Good morning, happy Wednesday, and welcome to the Language Confidence Project, the daily dose of language courage for people who love languages, and those who really don't but have to learn one anyway. And today, I just wanted to come in and talk about what to do when you just can't see the wood for the trees in your language learning. About how we get unstuck when we're just too tangled in our own circumstances to see the right next step.
So something I've been thinking about a lot lately is Solomon's Paradox, or the idea that we can all make so much more sense of other people's problems than our own. We can reason about them more effectively, and we just seem so much wiser in the face of other people's situations than we do our own, and that's in anything: Personal lives, professional lives, learning anything, relationships, and almost anything else.
And of course, in a way, it really does make sense, because we have distance. We aren't making decisions about their next steps out of fight or flight. And we are working with a narrow thread of the most important information and not trying to situate it in someone's entire past backstory, entire present nervous system response, and all their anxieties about their future.
But the trouble is, we don't always have people who can lend us their wisdom. Especially with something like language learning too, so many of the people around us have never even had to do it before, or they did it in circumstances so different from ours that it feels like a whole separate process for them than for us.
So, how do we break through the fog that we have around our own lives? How do we find that fire that comes through on behalf of other people that says, this isn't beyond you, or you deserve better than this, or it's not as complicated as you're making it out to be, you're just scared. Or even, you're blind to your own progress?
How do we get that clarity, that perspective, and that calm that comes from zooming out and seeing both our life and that question for what it really is and nothing more?
And the words you're looking for as the basis of figuring it out are self-distancing. You have to find ways to artificially project yourself out of your life to try and simulate that aerial view.
And it really does take some practice, but today I wanted to share with you three possible ways of doing it, and there are a lot more as well.
Thinking about the issue or the problem in the second or third person (so you, or he, she). Sometimes it's a lot easier to think about the big, tangly, messy issues as though they were happening to someone else, especially if it's someone else that you care about, like a good friend. What would you advise them to do? What questions would you ask them, to help them figure out where to go next? And of course by “questions” these are practical how-to questions that give actionable answers, like “what techniques help with speaking confidence?” or “how do we find resources on X?” and not questions like “why is life so unfair” and “what did I do to deserve this?” that lead to further rumination.
Imagine you were writing an information leaflet, or an essay if you prefer, for people dealing with the same thing as you. What would be the headings of the leaflet, or the sections of the essay? It helps to break the problem down into stages, and again it puts the focus on the practical rather than emotional sides of making progress.
Imagine that you are reporting your problem as though it were in a national newspaper. Purely the facts, reported in a dry, neutral way. Purge all the emotional language, keep it short, to the point, and only report the most salient information.
And finally, as a kind of three and a half, a trick to keep perspective on the problem. Something that is really commonly recommended is to think about what your future self might tell you if you could ask her about it. Is Future You from next month still worrying about this thing? How about Future You from next year? How about in 10 years? Is Future You telling the grandkids about this thing?
And what you're trying to do here is jump out of the swimming pool of your thoughts and feelings about this thing. You want to be able to observe it, not to be immersed in it. And then it's so much easier to see things clearly without the distortion of the water.
Whatever you're trying to figure out, language learners, trust that you will get there. The information is out there, the support is out there, and it might take some time, but you've done hard things before, and you will figure this thing out too. You know so much more than you think you do, and you know how to make the right decisions for yourself and for your life. You just have to trust yourself too.
And two super quick reminders. One is that this is the final week of season five of the podcast and season six will begin on the 29th of April. And the second reminder is that if you listen to this podcast and you'd love to come and say hello and talk to me about your language journey, then this is your opportunity, because I'm bringing back the 100 Conversations Project from last year where I invite listeners of the podcast to book a 30-minute call with me, just so that we can meet each other, get to know each other, and talk about your language journey and what carving your own path means to you. And I would love for you to be a part of this, whether you’re a new listener or whether we spoke last year and you’d love to update me. Just as before, these calls are not going to be recorded or used for content, there won’t be any sales pitches, it’s just a chance for us to meet each other, hang out, and chat about languages. So if you’d like to book a call, either to speak for the first time or to update me on how things have been going for you since we spoke last year, head to my Instagram bio on @teawithemily or my website www.languageconfidenceproject.com and I hope we chat soon!